Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Farley’s Olympic 2016 Wrap-Up: Our Most Memorable Moments

The 2016 Rio Olympics are now over; what will you remember most? Every four years the Summer Olympics come and go, but only a handful of memories tend to survive. Of course, those athletes that trained their whole lives to compete will have memories that last a lifetime, but for those of us who only watched the games, we’ll mostly only remember the highlights.

At The Farley Group, we love sports. Many of our dome’s sole purposes are as sport or multisport domes for things like soccer, tennis, running, swimming, volleyball, etc. We love to see athletes that may have trained in our domes on the world stage, so we were definitely paying close attention to this year’s Games. Here are some of our top memories for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Venues

As builders of sport venues ourselves, it’s always interesting to see what the engineers can come up with for Olympic venues.

Each Olympic Games there seem to be stories of down to the wire construction or problems with venues or buildings just prior to Opening Ceremonies. This year was no different and there were plenty of stories about contractor mistakes and missed deadlines, but Rio still produced some amazing facilities.

Many venues were constructed or updated for the games, but one of the most impressive was the Olympic Tennis Centre. The Centre housed 16 courts and the structure will stand as a legacy to the Games.

And not all sport venues were permanent. Beach volleyball is a fast growing sport, but it’s pretty difficult to build a sport facility on a beach. The solution was an impressive temporary arena set up on the Copacabana beach.

Top Performances

We all have our favourite athletes but there were some undoubtedly impressive performances.

In the pool, it was hard not to pay attention to Michael Phelps’ last Olympic hurrah. He ended out the games with five golds and one silver, bringing his total Olympic tally to 28 medals. At 31 years old, Phelps is the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time and considered one of the greatest Olympians of all time. Definitely memorable!

Another near super-human performance came from the great Usain Bolt. Often proclaimed the fastest human ever timed, Bolt took the gold for the third time in the 100 metre sprint—the first time it’s ever been done.

There were even some impressive new faces to the games. Swimmer Penny Oleksiak entered the Canadian spotlight when she won four medals at the young age of 16. She became the youngest Canadian Olympic champion and the first athlete born after January 1, 2000 to win a gold.

Whatever you remember from the Games, the message that the Olympics conveys is what’s important: hard work and dedication to doing what you love will take you far. For Olympic athletes, being on the world’s stage and showing everyone what they’re capable of makes all that effort and commitment worth it. Why else would anyone train everyday? What are the most memorable moments for you of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games?